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Bit off a good bit on handrail

This was a pretty big job for me at work. School is about three yrs old and the head men just noticed this handrail was only a top rail nothing in between and there afraid a little kid is going to fall through. It's about 20 ft long at about 31 degree angle.
They couldn't get any welders to bid on it with all that new stair tread and carpet and smoke alarm systems.
They asked me if I could do it and I told I would try it. I ran a 1 1/2 by 1/4 angle iron the whole length and bolted it so the legs wouldn't move Post are concreted in so we cut them 4 inch from the bottom and hauled it to our shop. It was a lot of work did it all myself.
The one thing I learned was why I'm not get better at welding. When I started grinding I had a lot of worm holes and slag holes . So rewelded with a 6013 and 6011 1/8 and put more angle on my rod and it was better .
Ive been welding on pipe fence here at the house and other stuff but don't ever grind anything out just fill it till I think that's enough bad mistake never learned about all those slag holes and worm holes . Maybe I can do better in the future.
Were going to try to run a sleeve inside and weld beck I don't know yet how it's going to go.

P

I would have bid that job either using clamp on parts, or cable railing. Either can be done on site in a few hours. If I was welding that in the shop, I would have MIG welded it. If it had to be stick, then I would have used 6010, just a personal preference.

You're not going to like what I have to say, but I agree with the title of your post.

You didn't state if this were pipe or tube, we don't know its thickness. Pipe (.125" or thicker) of that apparent diameter is amenable to stick welding with practice, tube is much, much more difficult in the hands of an amateur.

Most importantly, this is a handrail on an incline involving life-safety issues and is most likely covered under some ASME code. I personally wouldn't touch this job (especially thin tube) unless it were GTAWed in place according to the proper code. That may be the reason professional welders won't bid the job or the ISD rejected the bids as too expensive.

Filet-grinding long-arced 6011 or 6013(!) will result in a thinned, undercut weldment with poor penetration. A disaster waiting to fail.

Sorry man, but it might be best if you have this piece fabricated from new material and welded into place by a professional.

It will be fine. 3 well done tacks would hold the amount of weight that will be against the rails. Even if they could be swung on i wouldn't at all be worried. I agree your welds where rough but you ground them out and filled them in.
Tricky part might be getting the pipe to sleeve up your mounts. Good luck.